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PALO ALTO, CA - APRIL 28: An Apple Inc., employee holds the new white iPhone 4 at the Apple store April 28, 2011 in Palo Alto, California. The long awaited white iPhone, first announced in June of 2010, went on sale worldwide for the first time today. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

When I first bought an iPhone I thought: How beautiful and sleek – in fact the phone was so sleek it kept sliding out of my hand. Like most people who do not carry a handbag, I had to buy an ugly, black, plastic cover to stop me dropping it. My iPhone resided inside that case where nobody could see its sleek, rounded edges. To my surprise those edges made up part of the recent Apple vs Samsung infringement action. I say surprised but I mean astonished – how can anybody win a billion bucks for a design error? Or for that matter for being a trend setter?

But dare I say it - I rarely see an iPhone that is not encased. I rarely see one that is not hidden from view because of its impractical form (and wasn't Steve Jobs promising free covers to help overcome a mic (sorry antenna)-design defect two years ago?) Still, it is a design icon and there is a cost of iconic status. People copy you, defects and all. Apple's inability to deal with that should get us asking questions about its liberal arts credentials.

If Apple had really been in the design business then they’d have seen Samsung’s copy as sheer flattery (at least at the trade dress level) and moved on to the next iteration. Design is fashion, a peculiar form of intellectual property that wavers and transforms by the season.

In Brussels right now you can buy Pierre Marcolini’s autumn collection of chocolates. Since Marcolini began making single estate chocs, combining them with ingredients like Earl Grey tea, that fashion has swept through the chocolate making business. His neat idea of copying the seasonal element of fashion is also out there and copied. Marcolini is no longer alone in launching seasonal sweets.

But that's trivial you might say.... not to Pierre though, I'm sure. And that is the central issue with ideas and designs. To a degree, they are shared property. On the bigger stage, in the fashion business, Zara is a b-school case study in how to copy catwalk design and to get them into the shop, pronto. Zara in fact has built a new retail business model around being deft enough with color and shape not to be a total copycat but to get close enough that buyers crave its goods, while the original is still fresh in people’s minds.

When the Duchess of Cambridge wears blue, knitted, shops fill with blue, knitted. Chinese car manufacturers are upbraided for copying the designs of western car makers. But take a look at the new Audis. Audi is the up and coming design house in autos but I happen to think their latest shapes are a rip off of Mercedes. There’s only so many ways you can do four wheels and a cabin (or cockpit I guess we should say).

Design is not invention. It arises from a common pool of creativity. I happen to think Apple’s icon designs are superlative but no more so than Chris Bangle’s designs for BMW – now take a close look at Opel, which are as similar to BMW as Audi are to Mercedes and not just because Opel designers finally know how to do curves - more importantly they have the technology to bend the metal like BMW does.

Apple deserves no kudos for taking the trade dress fight to the courts. Maybe if they were a bunch of losers whose design advantage had been unfairly appropriated and now they had no cash for the kids' school fees, then there would be a cause for sympathy. But this is is the most valuable company in history. Mr Cook. Move on. Create.